


Bridger

by MAXiMINalist



Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Childbirth, Death, Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-02-28 07:39:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13266795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MAXiMINalist/pseuds/MAXiMINalist
Summary: The Lothal speech is cut short when Mira Bridger feels birth - and death - pangs.





	Bridger

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a Tumblr post speculating that Order 66 would induce early-labor in mothers carrying Force-sensitive children.

Mira had second thoughts about having a child. She slouched forward enough to inadvertently kiss the mic. She summoned herself back up to deliver the rest,

“…So Lothal, in this difficult time, as the Republic focuses on the Clone Wars efforts, we must not lose sight of our welfare…”

She drifted and her husband finished her message, 

“We are undergoing technical difficulties, we will be back with you.” He slammed his hand on the air button, putting them off the air, so not to confuse the Lothal populace. “Medic!” He cried. “No, no, no, only three more weeks, just three more weeks, not now.” 

But the momentary comfort of her husband’s hands did not prevent the weight of her belly from hurling her toward the radio panel and into the abyss where she _collapsed into an eternity, into a pit of perpetual noise and screaming from the dark, into the echo chamber of names, names she never knew, anonymous people falling with her, a cloaked figure leering over the frightened faces of children, and then a woman, a woman screaming at a boy, blood was streaming down the darkness, the boy was now running toward her, his bewildered countenance growing into view._

_In the flicker of seconds, Mira thought this was the boy she brought into the world and now she opened her arms, wide enough so her assumed son would know that she was a safe haven, that he would be safe in her arms. Hurry, run, child._

_The boy hurried close enough that she saw the flick of light blue in the child’s eyes then the dust caressed her fingers_ , when she was slammed against the surface, a blur of a man with her husband’s shape over her. 

“Where’s the boy?” She cried.

“He’s here.” The blur rendered into a sweat-soaked Ephraim, exasperated, eyes wet. “And he’s beautiful!” 

“No, a boy. There was his mother, telling the boy to run… the clones, the soldiers shot her and her boy-” But then a wail cut through her words and then she saw what she had missed: a bundle in her husband’s arms, a tiny hand peeping and reaching for his chin. 

“A nightmare.” Ephraim stroked her forehead with his free hand.

She shifted a little, the ceiling of the radio tower clearing into the view, and she realized there were cushions on her back. “People were dying, Jedi, I think…”

“Shhhhh, shhh, Mira, it’s over, he’s here, our little boy. Came out too early, but he’s strong, see?”

Then she felt the weight of the bundle gently lowered to her chest and a tuff of hair brushed her chin. What stared up at her were not the light blue hues of the boy of her dreams, but a darker blue of her husband’s.

_The woman hit the ground, red spilling._

She looked at the baby’s delicate forehead and cried, “He’s bleeding!” 

“No, it’s all right, it's just the fluids when he came out. He’s not bleeding. He needs to be cleaned up.”

The baby smelt like charred flesh, but there were no wounds on the baby. 

She hoped that this dread, this disquiet, which she pinned down as the expected consequence of childbirth which the midwife warned about, would evaporate into a memory, but it existed for many weeks, permeated her existence, when she named her son, when her son fed at her breast, when her son lifted himself on his toes, when her son babbled into the off microphone to emulate her. Sometimes, her baby smelled of charred flesh and blood despite clean of injuries or wounds.

She never dreamed of that anonymous boy again, but she willed herself to remember the dream again to imagine an ending where the boy ran into her arms in time.


End file.
